Joe Biden Strikes Again

Details on presidential motorcades, safe house for First Family, leak via P2P

Lawmakers eye bill to ban Vice-president's access to computer networks

By Jaikumar Vijayan
July 29, 2009

Computerworld - Details about a U.S. Secret Service safe house for the First Family -- to be used in a national emergency -- were found to have leaked out on a LimeWire file-sharing network recently, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were told this morning.

Also unearthed on LimeWire networks in recent days were presidential motorcade routes and a sensitive but unclassified document listing details on every nuclear facility in the country, Robert Boback, CEO of Tiversa Inc. told committee members.

The disclosures prompted the chairman of the committee, Rep. Edolphus Towns, (D-N.Y.), to call for a ban on the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) software on all government and contractor computers and networks. "For our sensitive government information, the risk is simply too great to ignore," said Towns who plans to introduce a bill to enforce just such a P2P ban.

Tiversa is a Cranberry Township, Pa.-based provider of P2P monitoring services. In the past, it has served up dramatic examples of highly sensitive information found on file-sharing networks. In January for instance, the company disclosed how it had discovered sensitive details about the President's helicopter, Marine One, on an Iranian computer after a document leaked out over a P2P network.

Today's hearing continued in that vein, with Tiversa providing new sensational examples of leaked information. Boback showed off a document, apparently from a senior executive of a Fortune 500 company, listing every acquisition the company planned to make -- along with how much it was willing to pay. Also included in the document were still-private details about the company's financial performance. Boback also showed numerous documents listing Social Security numbers and other personal details on 24,000 patients at a health care system, as well as FBI files, including surveillance photos of an alleged Mafia hit man that were leaked while he was on trial. He demonstrated to members of the committee how pedophile predators troll file-sharing networks looking for images and data.

Speaking with Computerworld before the hearing, Boback said that all of the information was readily available on LimeWire's file-sharing network after apparently being leaked. The data on the nuclear sites was found on computers associated with four IP addresses in France, though it is not immediately clear where the data came from. The files containing information about the president and his family had Barack Obama's seal on it and a July date.

Though the information was not classified, it was sensitive enough that under normal circumstances it would not have been available even via a Freedom of Information Act request, he said.